Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication (TOKKAI HEI) No. 5-147209 discloses a recording device of the type that records an image by transferring ink onto an image transfer intermediate and then transferring ink therefrom onto a recording medium. This recording device has an ink jet head comprising a heating device and a piezoelectric ceramics, which ejects melt ink drops of hot-melt ink through its nozzles onto an image transfer intermediate, cools down the ink drops adhering to the surface of the image transfer intermediate and then heats again the ink to be melt and transferred onto a recording medium moving round the image transfer intermediate to form thereon an image.
However, the prior art recording method using a conventional art transferring drum involves the following problems:
(I) An ink-jet head made of piezoelectric ceramics is featured by poor integration not to be adaptable to high-speed printing. PA0 (II) The ink-jet head for recording an image may be clogged with ink, requiring replacement by a spare head. This increases the running cost. PA0 (III) The use of hot-melt ink requires a relatively large consumption of electric power for melting it and requires considerable time for preparation for printing.